No, EU does not "plan to create a great firewall". It's an analytical report produced by a consulting company from Hamburg that comes up with a suggestion about creating an "European cloud/firewall" and further details suggest they don't quite understand the meaning of either word.
The report is not EU law. It's exactly what it is - a rather silly report produced by a consulting company on order from a EP agency.
P.S. it has nothing to do with 5G and deep state
Sure it will "have a part" - maybe around 0.001%. I was both contracted to write such reports (on electronic signature) and took part in public consultations on my own initiative. EU legislation is very long and multi-step process in which you can also have a say if you only pay attention. It has also many stakeholders and some of them certainly are fascinated by China or by Putin, which is quite natural in democracy. But it doesn't mean their vision will become law.
@kravietz I think the part it has to play will be larger than 0.001%, but I'm comfortable waiting it out and seeing for myself. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my humble pie.
Why exactly do you think so?
@kravietz In a word: zeitgeist. I'm speaking broadly, here, but for a while now, policy has been detached from from consequences. This detachment wasn't common knowledge, but with the virus, it is now. Goofballs believing bad memes now has a visible impact.
Discourse happens on the internet, bad ideas go viral, and then you have antivaxxers. There's strong political will to reign in and control the discourse, resulting from that common knowledge.
Policy makers are feeling that lack of control, and see this as a time of rapid change. Most importantly, people behave predictably when afraid, and this is a time of fear. Policy makers are afraid, the public is afraid, and things go predictably from there.
A lot of good points here (unfortunately), but nothing is carved in stone in this field. What I mean is that yes, there are antivaxxers, and there are various lobbyists pulling regulation here or there, but we can be part of the process too.
The worst legislative decisions are actually made when there's imbalance - so say only antivaxxers or only Google/Amazon/Facebook gang is interested in given project, and nobody else cares. These are lost by walkover essentially...
@kravietz We'll see where it goes.
The fact that we're discussing it here isn't actually a very good prognosis for the "Chinese firewall" folks, especially as we're discussing an early pre-regulatory report. I've seen a number of really stupid ideas being trashed at this stage - e.g. a few years ago someone lobbied for ban on open-source firmware for routers and mobile phones, and it was killed in the public consultation stage. I really started to appreciate the EU regulatory process after a few cases like this.
@kravietz This report will have a part to play in shaping the discussion of future EU policy. Policy writers understand the internet even less than the writers of this report. The report itself demonstrates that the animus for policy like this exists. Specific lines stand out as especially bald illustrations of the zeitgeist and incentives motivating certain decision makers.